2016-08-25 - Hot Day in the City
The heat in New York is blistering. The only people who are out are those with no choice, or those with air conditioning. The car that passes is potentially both of those, though the air conditioning is by far the more welcome. A black limousine pulls down Hudson blvd and turns on Fairway, heading south. With little to really draw attention to it, the sudden bullet that takes out the front driver's side tire is just that much louder in the city streets. Caroming off of a taxi, the limousine heads out of control into a pretzel stand, which sends cheesy comestibles all over the street. Other black cars, with tinted windows, immediately begin to appear. Like magic, or like they were planned to be here at this time. Guns pop out of windows as the cars approach, and citizens hit the dirt. Nightwing was in New York to look into the affair of the Kingpin, but it seems he will be sidetracked for that pursuit. He was in civillian clothes but quickly finds a private spoot to duck into tho change inot his Nightwing uniform. He rushes back ot he scene of the accident and crime, "Now now, good little criminals don't play with guns." Laura is walking down the sidewalk with a snowcone in hand. Someone has to represent that minority of mad dogs who are apathetic towards the mood swings of nature, and most who know her have occasional sleepless nights over the prospect of her with a driver's license. She licks the beads of vanilla that tumble down the sides, savoring the cold treat as she makes her way to the boxing gym. Until drama arrives. She thinks to herself that this is the sort of thing she occasionally visits Gotham for. The fact that it comes here for a change actually puts a flicker of a smile on her face until she notes the bulletholes that snuffed out the driver of the car. Dropping the snow cone, she bolts to the scene with the enduring speed of a distance track runner. Leaping over fire hydrants to avoid crowds she's soon accompanying Nightwing for this exercise. One car behind the whole mess is different. It's a classic vehicle. The one -real- personal expense that Special Agent Lydia Peal allowed for herself. A modern composite frame with modern engine technology... all encased in the body of a 1967 Camero Rally Sport... Matte Black with blue highlights. Okay, so she's a car girl. What? The sound of the bullet being fired makes her snap to the present from whatever reverie she had going on, and she suddenly guns her engine, steering around the vehicle ahead of her. She flips her sirens on and the flashers and audio issue forth... giving her the ability to get closer much faster, but making her, and her gorgeous car... quite a target. With the heroes zeroing in on the situation, the black cars pull up around the vehicle and doors open. The doors stay open as men in VERY expensive black suits pour out, holding various forms of semiautomatic weaponry. One largeish black man shoots out the other front tire of the limo while two turn on Nightwing, as the first on the scene. "Stick to the plan," the shorter one says as they fire on Nightwing, but don't seem to see Laura coming in from their right side and present a lovely target for her as they try to pin Dick to the wall by weight of lead. The incoming Camaro finds a path up to the scene, but finds itself blocked by the open doors of the black cars. It'll just have to drive through them to get closer, I'm afraid. It's a sad thing, I know. Nightwing does see Laura so he is fine drawing fire, instead of advancing on the crooks he keeps his sdistance and starts to perform some acrobatic manuevers to hhopefully avoid catchign any of that lead just incase it can peirce his armored costume and he says, "You guys will have to do better then that." Laura executes a flying dropkick at the man ignoring her. She loves it when the bad guys play dumb, especially at this moment when she's sailing through the air at the back of a gunman. If she drops this guy like a bad habit as she intends, she'll bounce directly off of him to take down his partner without skipping a beat with the intent of putting as quick a stop to the gunfire in public as possible. The poor second target will have not only her weight knocking him down, but a hand guiding his face into the sidewalk. She's gotten as close as she can, and to be honest.. she doesn't -want- to damage her car if she can avoid it. So Lydia opens her driver's side door and steps out with handgun in hand. She'd rather handle this with mundane methods... she'll resort to more electrifying tactics should the need arise. With the guns firing towards Nightwing, she shuts her car door and aims her FN-Five Seven at the guys, "Drop'em!" she calls out, trying to make herself a target. After all.. she -is- well I wouldn't call her bullet -proof- so much as Small Arms resistant! And.. then there's Laura and the flying kick. "That's gonna complicate matters." she mutters as she starts moving forward... With gunfire giving Nightwing some light evasion practice, he's got a lovely view as Laura, also known as X-23, caroms off of the gunmen's heads sending them to the ground with a rather gruesome crunch. Each. They deserved their own, after all. She doesn't play nice. Which is when the Special Agent chooses to pull up and add some official weight to the situation. Which mostly gets the men in black more vigorous about their activities, since they don't seem to be the type that gives up when given orders. Getting the locked door open on the limousine is a matter of the butt of a rifle smashing out the window, and the door is opened by one of the suited attackers. Reaching inside, the heroes see him pull out a man and a lady, both dressed rather middle-class but clean. Another man says, "The girl isn't there!" as he looks into the car, and others pull the man and woman to the ground. Guns are up, ready to fire, and several do so right immediately, at all three heroes. Mostly small arms, but they'll likely sting if they hit. As the fire splits to focus on more targets he starts to move forward using cars that have been abandoned by their drivers as cover to move clsoer as he puls out a couple of wing dings ready to be thrown when he gets close. Laura isn't afraid of a little gunfire, being the rare sort of individual that happens to be immune to lead poisoning. Ordinarily, she'd consider turning their guns against them while she got closer but she doesn't want to hurt civilians. That's why she charged in in the first place, minimizing that sort of thing. She combat rolls to the other side of the car away from the two she's faceplanted to get in cover and be out of sight while she strives to maneuver into a position where she can take down the man that drug the two out of the car quickly. Thus far, she's avoiding cutting anyone but that may be about to change if she can't spot a good takedown opening. And... gunfire comes back at her. Lydia's going to have to get a new jacket and new shirt after today. She's about to understand She-Hulk a -lot- more. She wades forward and starts to prove that being -under- fire, doesn't make her less able to shoot back. She holds the weapon in a two handed grip and aims at the guy by the window. Her weapon bucks once, twice.. as she fires. "Like I said, drop'em!" She announces. She's knocked back a half pace by the force of the whithering fire. But she pushes back into it... changing targets and firing at the nearest suited thug. "FBI!" She announces. Of course, her boss is going to kill her for -not- putting on that skimpy costume before engaging. "Cheese it, it's the cops!" says one of the men in black, which just gets him glared at by his compatriots. They start backing away from Laura and Lydia, the two more obvious threats, though those with good hearing can catch some interrogation occurring by the far side of the limo. 'Where's the girl?' 'Oh you'll talk, she can't be far. Cut the car in half!' And three of the men turn their weaponry on the limo, to start firing into IT, in case the 'girl' is hiding inside. At that moment, the trunk pops open and a small figure bolts from that hiding spot like a running deer. Right between two men with shotguns, who reach out and snag the girl by the jacket. Looks like a twelve or thirteen year old, black hair, scared. Lydia's blasting fire knocks one of the men to his back, where he groans but doesn't try to get back up. Body armor only stops so much, but at least they're wearing it. (please feel free to take out thugs at your leisure, I'm assuming you're all quite capable of eliminating one or two of the remaining ten of them without backup.) Nightwing throws the brace of Winddings he had in his hand, aiming at the weapons of hte pair that grabbed the girl, then he leaps forward with a first to the face of the goon neariest him. "Civilian in the middle of things if you guys gcna get her out of there." Laura isn't far from the interrogation going down, and she snikts out her blades to deal with it. She isn't going to be fancy when guns and civies are in immediate proximity. Sprinting forward, she'll go for an immediate disabling stab that targets the man's wrist to make his gun hand go useless with one pair of claws, the other will go into the shoulder of that same limb for the safety measure as she instructs,"Drop it, and turn yourself in." She'll turn her intention quickly to the hostages, then to the rest of the scene playing out. Okay, civilian in the line of fire. Lydia lowers her weapon and moves fast. Really fast. She is up and over the car ahead of her in the blink of an eye, and goes for a flying tackle towards the girl. She's not trying to tackle the kidnappers. They were willing to just pour fire into the car to try to kill the girl, so she knows they aren't worried about taking her alive. So she's trying to tackle the girl to place her own far more durable body in the way of further attacks towards the girl. Sure, it might lead to bumps and bruises, but those are better than bulletholes, yes? The overall situation being generally bullets-for-everybody, the unlikely hero team seems quite capable of evading them and focusing on a more important situation. In this case, the pair with the youth suddenly find their hands struck by Nightwing's fire, dropping their guns. At that moment, Laura's strike takes out the hand holding the girl, and Lydia tackles the girl out of their reach. Some small fire comes their way, giving Lydia reason to worry because she's not -entirely- sure that the girl's safe, but since most of them seem to have hit her and not the one she's protecting, she seems to have gotten away with the tackle. Laura lands in the midst of the two who had the girl and then launches herself into the group holding the adults, which gets HER a couple bullets for her trouble, but also gets her standing within arm's reach of three very nicely dressed targets. Who have conveniently pushed the civilians to the ground for 'safety'. Nightwing finds himself face to face with the rather big, muscular black man with the shotgun and the escrima stick in the off hand, who says, "Excellent. I get a bat." He swings at Nightwing with the stick, holding the shotgun for his second blow. As a side note, Nightwing sees that the little girl DID in fact get a bullet, though it looked like a foot shot. Lydia, looking at the girl, sees her scared but not panicked. She's wearing a red jacket, a black choker, and a black skirt. Nightwing smiles to the black man, "Be glad you did not get the Bat." He tenses his abs and core muscles to help absorb the blow. He then brings his left arm down ot trap the arm of the larger man against his own side. Since the other man cannot get away at the moment he repostes with a conbination strike with hsi right forarm follwed up with his right elbow on the back swing. Laura is shot. Wouldja look at that. She narrows her eyes as she mutters,"Thats it. Stabs for everybody." Disregarding the one she's already stabbed, she drops into a tiger crouch to deliver a slash with the tips of her blades behind the knee of her nearest target in an effective hamstring. Slipping from there into a pivot, she stabs the next one directly in the foot as she puts away the blades on her free hand as she uppercuts him the jaw. One left. And.. down they go. Lydia and the girl. "Hold still. Let me cover you." she mutters as she starts losing her grip. But she's still getting shot from behind and she lost her weapon back there. So she turns and presents herself as a shield for the girl as she points a finger at the nearest gunman. "Bang." she states.. and an arc of electrical energy.. a tazer basically.. flows from her fingertip right to the man.... Then another gets the same treatment. When there are no more attackers ... attacking, she looks back and says, "Are you.... 'the hell? Where'd she go?" as she notices the girl is -gone-. The child slips, literally, out of Lydia's arms and pauses in front of her. While Lydia is distracted, she gives an utterly terrified glance at the group and then dashes into the nearest alleyway and she's gone, leaving Lydia's hands slightly dirty but with no sign that the kid is hurt. A quick glance at the ground shows no blood, so she must be alright. Win for the heroes. Laura's attacks send people flying like poorly designed pinatas...and the bolt of lightning that finishes off Laura's remaining target steals her fun! Though it all works in the end, Nightwing seems to be the one with the worst enemy, as the last two baddies leap on top of Laura and Lydia with...predictable results. Nightwing's guys weapon is stuck, so he tries to shoot him at close range with the shotgun. A quick dodge allows Nightwing to let that blast go over his shouldre, and he headbutts up into the man's chin with precision. Suddenly the area is clear of enemies, and two civilian adults staying low out of fear are the only people still in the game. Well, except for the three saviours. Who barely had a workout at all. Laura handles the last guy with a similar tactic to her previous. Laura's been working on her technique, endeavoring to become more intricate. She hits him low with a hamstring attack similar to the previous, slipping a blade to his achilles tendon where she rips it out before driving an elbow into his kidney to send him tumbling. She remains in a combat stance in case of more, eyes wary. The big guy can take some damage alrigh but Nightwing is very capable in dishing it out. Even without room to move around he is a class above his opponent. Nightwing guves the man a palm strike to the side ot knoc k him off balance hten a back heel trip to take him to the pavement as he lets go of the arm. Given the situation, the men in black (no relation to the movie, don't sue me) see that they're in trouble. Thus, new tactics, and Laura finds herself facing off against one of them in his car instead of solo with a gun. Revving as he faces off against the girl, he sights her up and watches her, ready to go. Then, just as Laura eyes him warily, he guns the vehicle at her with the pedal hitting the floor, rubber flying! Silly villains. Stumbling back, the large man drops to his back on the concrete, dropping his shotgun which goes skidding to Nightwing's feet. He rubs his head, looking up at the super-hero, and starts to move to get up again... Laura hasn't seen the fourth Karate Kid, but nevertheless she knows how to drop into tiger stance when the bull charges. Then, she leaps to take hold of the situation with one pair of fist blades embedded in the windshield when she lands on the hood to anchor her as busts out his window with the other (assuming its up!). The trained assassin works fast, once its open, she'll make to slip into it with a show of acrobatic coordination where she can get the finish! All the while, she'll trust to her healing factor in case he gets smart to shoot through the windshield. Better her body than the one across the street. Nightwing does his best to channel the frightening nature of his mentor as he picks up the shotgun and breaks the stock away from the barrel rendering the weaon non-functional then he looks at the man on his back, "Stay down, you get up that becomes one of your bones." With Laura riding the car, she's not long before she joins the suited man inside, the glass breaking and shattering and other noisy verbs that are suited to this situation, allowing her to land in the man's lap, all sharp and pointy as she is. This does very little for the vehicle's handling, unfortunately, as he tries to shoot her at literally zero range and pays very little attention to minor details like steering. The black car careens toward the limousine, heading directly toward the two civilians who are starting to realize that they're no longer under obligation to stay on the ground, and are getting slowly to their feet. Laura puts her blades away once she's inside, no longer needing them for this sort of close up work. For this situation, she uses her head. Specifically, she applies her brain case against his as she works with her hands to pin his down and thereby put a stop to the smarting bullets that are making her lightheaded from bloodloss. Smacking him once, twice, then thrice until his eyes roll up she doesn't pay much attention to the direction of the car as it fails to occur to her that it might be at the limousine or that the civies would still be lying there at this point. There is nothing Nightwing cna do to stop the car, at least not quickly enough so he does the next best thing in his mind he runs toward the civilians as they are startning ot get up, he lowers his head and shoulderbalock into htem sending them toppling out of hte way, it is a painful resuce but a lot less painful than being hit by a car. He manages to rolls out of hte qay mere moments before hte car would have hit him then he looksat the pair of civilians, "You two alright?" The black car slamming into the side of the limousine is a lovely mess, but at least it's still a low speed impact. The guy inside has the air bag; Laura gets to go out the window, which is probably uncomfortable, but she'll survive. She always does. The two civvies wince as the cars hit each other, or technically just one hitting the other, don't get picky. Harumph. Then they look more worried, not less. About Laura. "Ambulance? We're okay, we're okay." Laura is visibly uneasy on her feet, her nice day clothes riddled with bullet holes and slick with blood and her expression possibly ashen from the blood on her clothes instead of in her where it belongs. She mutters,"Someone just get me back to the mansion, please..." She blearily looks to the civies they rescued, verifying for herself that they are fine before she flops down to the ground on her behind. That's better, the world doesn't spin so fast down here. Nightwing nods to the civvies, "If oyu have a phone call one." He then runs over ot Laura and checks her pulse not really knowing about her healing factor. Laura is already recovering, as if by miracle. Her pulse is probably pounding as it'll take some time to recover from that much blood loss but her bulletwounds are already nearly closed. Fortunately, most of the shots went right through her so won't have to be dug out later. She's actually giggling at the moment from the lightheadedness, she mutters to Nightwing,"Know why stabbing the foot is fun? They pooh themselves, heehehehehee...there's nerves in foot, hit them right and Stinky Mess! Heeheheheee..."